The Lyceum of Abhorrence
The zone in to this raid is from Tenebrous Tangle, on Fear Tainted Isle Strategies Essence of Fear *Location: The Lair of Fear atop the Pillar of Fear *Level: 75x4 *Health: 2.7M HP *Attack: Crush, Mental *AOE: Fear Grasp, mental, ~27s *Specials: AOE fear *Spawn: ** Clear rooms Lair of Fear, Chamber/War, Chamber/Feasting, Chamber/Eggs, and Chamber/Chants - it will turn the golems in Lair of Fear aggro ** Kill all golems in Lair of Fear except one near entrance stairs ** Move to entrance stairs and pull last golem to stairs; this spawns the Essence of Fear on the spiral statue *Strategy: ** Have entire raid go in walk mode and let them crouch. ** The essence is the one whom casts fear. ** Rumored that the orbs cast fear. Drag the Essence into the entrance hallway for killing. Orbs' Fear is not an issue this way. Easiest for this is petpulling it to the stairs. Gnillaw the Demented *Location: The Corruption Chamber *Level: 74x4 *Health: 2-2.25M HP *Attack: Crush *AOE: Gnillaw's Fear Strike, Slash, ~27s *Specials: ** AOE Knockback ** He heals himself at 1% HP to 25% HP. ** He nukes like hell when on 2% HPs - An Inquisitor's Verdict can handle this. ** He has four adds that are mezable/snare-able/root-able. *Strategy: ** Pull into hallway that named faces to have less room for raid to be knocked back. ** Two enchanters work well to AE Mez the adds on incomming, and then single target mez while raid kills one at a time. ** Charm appears to work via Troubador, Coercer, or Necromancer. An unfortunate side effect of the Charm is that if the raid subsequently wipes, the mobs do not properly reset to their starting positions, causing significant pull problems for subsequent pulls. The plus side is that charmed adds add 1.5-2k dps. Gnorbl the Playful *Location: Gnorbl's Chamber *Level: 75x4 *Health: 1.5M HP *Attack: Crush *AOE: None *Specials: Every time you kill one of his add or summoned servant he heals himself. *Strategy: ** It might be advantageous to pull this encounter with a pet. The pet will absorb a lot of nasty attacks that create a messy damage spike on the MT. A Plane Shifted, Bolstered Tellurian works really well. It's not 100% necessary, but it can be helpful. ** Initially, you need to go AE crazy on Gnorbl and his little Fearlings. Burn them all down within the first 20 seconds or so. After this, all AE's should be avoided at all costs. ** Basically, every so often Gnorbl summons 5 dumbfire pets. These pets are very strong hitters and extremely dangerous. Unfortunately, you can't kill them. Each time you kill one Gnorbl is healed. To make matters even more interesting, these dumbfire pets have an AE taunt that will change your target to them. ** Have all your DPS create a macro like this: /target Gnorbl the Playful. This is case sensitive! Now, assign that macro to a VERY convenient hotkey. Have your DPS spamming this key the entire fight. This will keep their target where it should be. ** Place your Enchanters around the mob. As soon as they see the dumbfires pop, have them AE mez them. Keep those mobs mezzed and all will be well. Occasionally one will get woke up, just single target mez it. It's important to spread your Enchanters around a bit, targeting can get difficult with all the melee and other mezzed mobs. Having mezzers in different locations helps assure that someone is always available to mez and have a good clear line of sight to the target. Also, with the recent changes to AE mezs, it would probably be advantageous to have at least 2 Enchanters for this part. ** Consider banning all pets. Pets are subject to the AE taunt of the dumbfire pets and will quickly break mezzes and make a mess of the situation. A *really* talented Summoner could probably deal with it, but better safe than sorry in most cases. ** The longer this fight goes on, the less likely you are to win. Vilucidae the Priest of Thule *Location: The Sanctum of Fear (second level) *Level: 75x4 *Health: 3M HP *Attack: Crushing *AOE: Barrage *Specials: ** To activate Vilucidae, simply walk up to him after clearing all other mobs in the room. He will then proceed to walk down into the pit toward the far end. When he reaches the far end, he turns killable and aggro. ** When you enter the pit and start fighting with him the pit locks up - there is no possibility to enter or leave the pit during a fight and it is not possible to pull him out of the pit. ** Vilucidae sometimes ignores the person who pulls him at first no matter how many taunts are used. It may be best to have a pet or secondary tank pull him then MT rescue. He can also be mezz pulled to give MT enough time to build aggro. ** There are special flowers (which cast a poison based fear) summoned into random locations around the pit each time Vilucidae enters a stance. They HAVE to be destroyed immediately - target the flower root, press right mouse button and select their destruction. You can also double click a flower to destroy it. You can destroy them from range when in third person. ** Vilucidae changes his fighting stances based on how much health he has at the time. The change of stance is announced by the on-screen message: ***- STANCE OF FRIGHT (offensive stance) ****+ Active between 100 and 75% health. ****+ 25% chance to double attack. ****+ Attack speed increased. ****+ Possible frontal barrage. ***- STANCE OF TERROR ****+ Active between 75 and 50% health. ****+ Chance to reflect spells at their caster. ****+ Avoidance increased. ****+ Melee crit chance greatly increased. ***- STANCE OF DREAD (healing stance) ****+ Active between 50 and 25% health. ****+ In-combat health regen increased. ****+ Rispostes 25% of frontal attacks. ***STANCE OF THULE (defensive stance) ****+ Active between 25 and 0% health. ****+ Ripostes 50% of frontal attacks. ****+ Avoidance, mitigation, and magic resistance greatly increased. ****+ Cures all debuffs and DoTs from himself when he enters stance. ** This fight is very long (could be as long as 25 minutes) so be prepared for it - buy clarity potions, have Manastone, Vessel of Fy'run, Prismatic 1.0 or Prismatic 2.0 for healers. Invite enchanters/bards/summoners. Collect mana regen gear. ** Consider assigning players to different areas of the pit for flower destruction. I've seen good success dividing the pit into 4 quarters and assigning two players to each area to destroy flowers. ** This mob has no knockback and so it is not necessary to fight him against a wall. ** The 3 million HP number is a little misleading. He doesn't truly have that many HP. Many of those HP come from his healing stance. Nevertheless, because of that stance, it is definitely a long fight. The upshot however is that it is possible to "burn through" one of his stances if your tank is able to hold aggro. ** Vilucidae has no CA's or spells of his own. All of his damage is from auto attack and the modifications to his auto attack done by the stances. Keep this mob debuffed to the caps at all times. Slows, DPS debuffs, melee skill debuffs, stat debuffs are all super important here. ** It is possible to pull Vilucidae out of the pit, this is how you do it: *** Make a macro of /target Vilucidae the Priest of Thule (or just target it) **** This doesnt work anymore so you have to go target it by clicking its name now, but after that ya can still do the exact same tactic as before *** Pull it with a pet up the stairs to where your raid force is waiting *** Taunt it with your MT ** This way, you avoid the entire fear casting plants making this fight alot easier Trash Mobs This part is on the way but there is nothing special except serious MT debuffing. There is one particularly nasty pull of trash mobs in the hallway leading down to Vilucidae's room. Eight total mobs. Taken one at a time, they are not a problem, however all eight can create serious healing problems. The best strategy is to assign four fighters, each with their own targets. Mez the rest and allow each fighter to break mez as their mob dies. If you find this pull to be overly problematic you can simply pull with an encounter snare and follow immediately with an encounter / AE root. From that point you simply target thru your MT and do no AE's, breaking root on one mob a time and keeping the rest rooted away from the raid. External Links *Level 1 map (EQ2maps) *Level 2 map (EQ2maps)